A controversial legislative rider, which allows farmers
to keep growing a genetically modified (GM) crop while being challenged in
court, will expire on September 30 and will not be part of the U.S. Senate’s
Continuing Resolution (CR), according to a Politico article available here.

The CR approved by the House last week extended the
rider, but according to Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR), the “provision will be gone”
in the Senate’s CR.

The rider included in the House CR, available here,
contained “strong” language, directing the Secretary of Agriculture, Tom
Vilsack, about how he should respond to future court cases involving GM
seeds. The provision reads, "the
Secretary of Agriculture shall, not withstanding any other provision of law,
upon request by a farmer … immediately grant temporary permit(s) or temporary
deregulation.”While Vilsack has
championed the biotech industry, he was uncomfortable with what he saw as an
effort to “pre-empt judicial review.”

Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) led an online petition to
oppose the extension and worked with legislative leaders to ensure that the
rider would expire, according to a Huffington Post article, available here. Sen. Merkley said, “This is a victory for all
those who think special interests shouldn’t get special deals. This secret rider, which was slipped into a
must-pass spending bill earlier this year, instructed the Secretary of
Agriculture to allow GMO crops to be cultivated and sold even when our courts
had found they posed a potential risk to farmers of nearby crops, the
environment, and human health.”